


Seeing the Light

by invisible_doorknob



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-03
Updated: 2016-10-03
Packaged: 2018-08-19 05:48:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8192501
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/invisible_doorknob/pseuds/invisible_doorknob
Summary: Derek never expected to survive the truth...





	

**Author's Note:**

> This has probably been done already. Nevertheless, here it is again.

_Hello darkness, my old friend…_

Someone, Derek couldn’t remember who just now, had been a huge fan of ‘70s pop. Probably his dad; he remembered the LPs from when he was a kid, the endless repetitions of Peter, Paul and Mary and The Carpenters. Derek didn’t actually learn to dislike it until later; for years it was just background noise.

Now, he would give a lot to hear his dad singing along, even out of tune.

When he’d woken in the cage, Derek had thought that there was just no light in whatever room the Hunters had put him in, but he wasn’t so sure any longer. They might have blinded him somehow; the endless, absolute darkness pressing on his eyeballs might be just an inability to _see_.

He hoped it wasn’t, but hope was a fading thing now.

Derek couldn’t tell any more how long he’d been there. One moment he’d been minding his own business--just getting back from a run, in fact--and then there’d been the crackle and stink of electricity, and searing pain.

And when next he’d opened his eyes, there had been nothing.

Touch had revealed the dimensions of his prison--big enough that he could almost stretch to his full height, but no more--and his ears and nose had told him there was no one in the room beyond the bars that burn when he touches them. There’s only the faintest hum of some kind of power, and a vague acrid hint of ozone.

And in all the endless hours since, there has been nothing more than that. No voices, no movement.

No explanations.

Derek wishes he at least knew who had caught him, and why. No one comes to question or taunt or torture--no one comes at all.

As imprisonments went, he’s had worse. Except for one thing.

His time sense is completely screwed of course, but Derek is pretty sure it’s been almost a week. He can go a long time without food, but he’s rapidly approaching a hard limit on dehydration.

It’s an effective torture all on its own. All his muscles are cramping in unpredictable spasms, and his mouth and throat and eyes are so dry they’re like sandpaper. He’s very tempted to bite open a vein and drink his own blood, just for the moisture, except it won’t help.

He’s begun hallucinating now, visions and voices from his past, some terrible, some comforting; most merely strange. His sisters laugh in his ears; a teacher lectures a class, tiny with distance. For a little while he can smell the scorch of burning even though there is no smoke.

People pass before him, moments caught out of time, faces from memory. Family, and the people he once called pack.

Derek’s not sure which hurts the most.

When the hallucinations ebb, fading back into the absolute darkness, Derek feels oddly like he’s floating. The cramps still pain him, but it feels like something inside has come loose, as if his grip is relaxing--though he can’t say what it was he was holding so tightly.

And the words bubble up.

It hurts to talk, too, and Derek almost doesn’t recognize his own voice. His lips crack and bleed, but he licks away the coppery fluid and goes on, a trickle of hoarse truth spilling out.

“I miss you guys.” Because he DOES, he always has. Being grumpy and standoffish doesn’t mean he can’t be lonely too. “I miss the arguments and the game nights and the runs when the moon is full.”

More memories, good times and bad, horror mixing with the mundane everyday simplicities. The smooth roar of the Camero, the screech of a harpy; Erica’s elbow digging into his side, the sear of wolfsbane in his veins. Scott and Stiles laughing. Stiles’ hands on Derek, trying to steady him. The reek of chlorine, and Stiles arm around Derek’s neck. Scott’s quizzical look; Stiles rolling his eyes. Stiles waving his arms and babbling. Bright brown eyes and the smell of Adderall.

Stiles. Stiles. Stiles.

It always comes back to Stiles, in the end. And Derek never so much as hinted at it, because Stiles was underage, and anyway everyone Derek ever loved died, and he couldn’t face that again. ESPECIALLY not with Stiles.

But now it’s Derek who’s dying, and so Stiles is safe, wherever he is.

“It’s why I left, you know,” he mumbles to the silence. “Because then you’d survive.” Stiles with his stupid quips and his nervous wit and the warm hidden heart of him, the compassion he tried to hide, the glee that spilled over when he got something right. The grace buried within his awkward limbs. The way he bit his lip and glanced sideways at Derek when he thought Derek wasn’t paying attention, with a sort of smothered hope in his eyes. The way he smelled, of hormones and resignation, with that sharp sparkling edge of magic.

“I could eat your smell.” Derek is curled up on the floor of the cage, and something in him realizes that it’s his deathbed. The words he’s giving to the dark will be his gravestone, the last reminder of his existence, and if they don’t last long, well...even the hardest granite crumbles in the end. He’ll speak his feelings now, and die free of denial. “I could eat YOU...but only in th’best way.”

He blinks sticky lids and lets them fall shut again, wondering once more whether the room is truly dark or if he’s been left stone-blind. “You were the reason I stayed, y’know...too long but you’re so...I knew I’d miss you.” Too much, too much and in the end it hadn’t mattered, but now Derek didn’t care. He might not have had Stiles’ brightness for himself, but at least he knew it was still out there, burning like a sun.

“Couldn’t have you...but I kept you safe.” Derek rests his cheek against the cold metal; it seems to be drawing his life away, all his warmth leaching into the chill. “Had to be that way...you understand?”

Everything is fading, smell and sensation and even pain, but some last spark in him wants to make sure even though his thoughts are scattering, going out like sparks. The last breath of sound echoes around his skull. “Understand?”

The darkness swallows him up.

* * *

 

The one thing Derek really isn’t expecting is to _wake up_. And at first he’s not sure he does; things sort of wash in and out for a while, consciousness coming and going like a cat not sure what side of the door it wants to be on. _Understand? Understand?_ whispers past him without echo, until the word loses meaning.

But eventually the cat picks awake, or at least “not dead”, and Derek lies still for a while taking things in. There’s a needle in his arm, and he’s feeling that familiar combination of warmth and ache that means he’s mostly healed, but at the same time he’s afraid to open his eyes, because he might still be blind.

There are, after all, ways to blind a werewolf, if you know how.

So Derek doesn’t move, he just takes in the sounds and scents. They’re familiar; he’s in the pack’s loft, almost as if he’d never left, but there’s only one scent nearby.

Of course it’s Stiles.

He isn’t fidgeting, but Derek can hear the tiny taps and shifts, and knows Stiles is working with his phone--probably texting. Derek’s first impulse is to just keep still until he’s gone, because the last thing he needs now is to break back into all the stifled longing he’d tried to leave behind.

But he can smell settled contentment and a touch of sleepiness, and he knows Stiles isn’t going anywhere soon. Derek stays limp, and almost drifts back to sleep, but as soon as he begins to fade his body gives a long sigh, and he hears Stiles straighten.

“About time you came back,” Stiles says cheerfully, and even though Derek stays still, Stiles sets down his phone with a click and leans closer; the faint ghost of warmth brushes Derek’s skin and raises the hair on his arm. “Hold still, this thing is empty and it’s the last one.”

Warm fingers extract the needle and bandage Derek’s arm deftly. His mouth still tastes terrible but it’s not paper-dry, so the IV must have rehydrated him. Derek’s grateful, but at the same time his sharpening wits are wondering how the hell they FOUND him.

As if he’s reading Derek’s mind, Stiles sighs and settles down again. “I know you’re awake,” he says. “But, hey, if you want to play dead that’s okay. Been a long couple of weeks for you.”

Derek’s starting to feel a little silly, but he still doesn’t move. Maybe if he’s silent long enough, Stiles will leave, and Derek can find out whether he’s blind without someone watching.

“We almost didn’t get there in time,” Stiles says, and the sudden lack of humor in his voice is telling. “It’s only because Danny was hacking that Hunter cell that we even found out that they had you. Dude, you have GOT to start keeping in touch.”

Something brushes past Derek’s still hand, as if Stiles wants to touch him but doesn’t quite have the nerve. Derek has to hold back the impulse to snatch at the movement.

“The really sick thing,” Stiles continues, “is that we watched you for like three days before we figured out it was you.” And the bottom drops out of Derek’s stomach, because if they’d seen him, then he IS blind, and--

“Lemme tell you, infrared images? They’re blobs.” Stiles shifts again. “It wasn’t until you started talking that we knew.”

Derek’s rush of relief is drowned in sudden, excruciating embarrassment. Because it wasn’t that he didn’t want Stiles to know all that, but he hadn’t expected to have to DEAL with it.

“It’s a good thing we were already on the way.” Stiles’ voice thins a little, as if his throat has gone tight. “And by the way, you asshole, that has got to be the stupidest reasoning I’ve ever heard, and I have heard a LOT of bullshit by now.”

His smell is anger and nervousness, on top of a thread of salty-sweet that makes Derek’s heart pound, but before he can decide what to do Stiles moves, and his mouth is warm and soft and the same salt sweetness, and Derek’s eyes fly open to a flood of light.

He’s not sure if it is the light or Stiles that blurs them with tears.

It takes a while before either of them can speak again, but Stiles manages to fit next to Derek on the bed. His kisses have stolen all of Derek’s resistance, and somehow Derek can’t bring himself to care.

“Are you sure?” he finally says, muttering it into Stiles’ throat, his voice still so hoarse that the words are hardly more than a whisper. “I’m not wrong, you know. They’re all dead.”

Stiles makes a “pffft” noise. “Then we gotta turn this thing around.” He shifts enough to look Derek in the eyes, and Derek looks back, seeing, SEEING. Brightness and life and--

\--love.

“Lots of things try to kill me on a weekly basis,” Stiles says sternly. “I’m not dead yet, and somehow, neither are you.” He kisses Derek again, which means it’s a few more minutes before they get back to the conversation. “So I’m sticking around, and you’re sticking around.” He squeezes Derek a little tighter. “Understand?”

And Derek nods, and pushes his face back into Stiles’ neck, where his scent is warmest. And holds on.

Because, at last, he DOES understand.

~End~


End file.
